In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor Pulled From Sale

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Arcen Games are primarily known for making interesting (and ugly) strategy games, but last Wednesday, August 24th, the small team released 3D dino-vs.-robots action game In Case Of Emergency, Release Raptor into early access. Then on Saturday, August 27th, they announced they were unreleasing it. Now as of today the game is no longer on sale and refunds are available for those who already purchased it through Steam.

Arcen founder Chris Park explained in the initial announcement that the game was being pulled essentially due to a lack of sales: “The game is selling extremely poorly, even below what happened with Starward Rogue.” The rest of the post then goes on to posit possible reasons for that, from people dismissing it as a Goat Simulator-style joke game, to Arcen’s audience only wanting strategy games from them, to Steam now being overcrowded “with something approaching the App Store effect that we’ve seen on Apple devices.”

The company still like the idea of the game and hope to one day make a sequel which would include the features once intended for this game, but there are currently no plans to pursue that. Instead Park says that Arcen will turn their attention to something they’re more certain their fans want, a sequel to the large-scale space strategy game that first made their name, AI War. AI War 2: Rise from Ashes, as its currently called, will be a Kickstarter project, to raise funds and better gauge interest before committing months of work to the project.

42 Comments

I appreciate that I may be missing something but why pull a game from sale if it’s good enough to sell? I can understand why a company would pull a bad game but having released this it seems the two outcomes would be “recoup some of the costs through sales” or “recoup none of the costs”.

Chris Park goes in to some detail but basically the idea is – this was Early Access. Buyers were buying it with the understanding that a whole bunch of extra features and content would be added (Arcen had specifically described some of the extra stuff they would be doing). However, the sales and reception so far suggested that actually doing this work would lose money. So the options were:

– Continue working on the game and lose money
– Leave the game as it was, on sale and in the hands of EA buyers, but stop work. This would be in breach of what was explicitly said in marketing
– Cut loses, refund players who thought they were getting more than just an alpha. Let people keep the alpha if they really want.

Nobody should ever, ever be buying a game in Early Access under the understanding that it will be something other than what it is at the moment they are buying it. It’s fine to say, “Hey, here are some things we would like to add to this game as it continues to develop.” It’s even fine to say, “This is the point at which we will consider the game ready to release.” But anyone who is looking to purchase one of those projected versions of the game needs to wait and get that version of the game if it ever actually manifests. Because there simply is not a guarantee that will happen until it does.

Same thing with Kickstarter. If you can afford to straight up lose every cent that you are putting towards a project without the least bit of return, then go ahead and make that pledge. If you want guarantees, wait until it’s done. Because that’s the only way you’re getting any.

That’s not to say that the creators of the EA title or Kickstarter project have no accountability or obligation in the matter. They absolutely should attempt to deliver. And I think Arcen is doing about the best possible thing from a customer goodwill position given the decision that this particular project is not a viable investment of their resources. But these are very much caveat emptor situations and it pains me that people go into them without that mindset.

I bought this the day before yesterday because I wanted to support the company. It’s a shame it will not see the light of day because it looked like it would become quite good fun. The silly thing is it has received quite a bit of coverage since being pulled from sale, maybe enough to sell a few copies and get it going!

I have no time left to check out “tier 2” and lower games any more – games that can’t explain convincingly why they may be most innovative or best experience of a kind, or demonstrate any other ambition behind them.
In this sense this game seems designed to stay completely under the radar.

“with something approaching the App Store effect that we’ve seen on Apple devices.”

Yeah, competition for visibility on Steam has become a lot worse since Greenlight… but it will be a while before it gets smartphone level bad. The number of apps added to the App Store and Play Store daily (over a thousand for each) is roughly equivalent to the number of games added to Steam annually. And your average smartphone audience is unlikely to be willing to pay for your software upfront (around 70% of the apps on either app stores are free) or keep up with the gaming press or YouTube channels to keep track of new releases (so you better get lucky and be featured on the store frontpage).

You reckon? I think you’re forgetting price differences between smartphone apps and Steam games, which generally range from higher to much-higher. At higher prices the saturation effect might happen with far lower volumes of items on sale. Personally, my mind boggles a little at the sheer amount of games on Steam even before you get to Greenlight. I think the theory bears more discussion.

I do already kind of have the Apple effect on Steam though. I used to buy a lot of games on Steam, but now I can’t see the forest through the trees. I like the Steam sales not because of the prices, but because it usually highlights the ‘better’ games (games that fit me better).

It’s already at Apple app store level for me, and reached that point a while ago. I used to scan the lists for popular and upcoming games. I never do that now, because it’s so loaded with anime and indie junk titles.

These guys traditionally have a problem with presentation, and this game is no exception. I have yet to see a screenshot from the game that is something other than a stock dinosaur model in a stock cyber-hallway. If they’d budget for a decent art director (and artists) they’d probably have much better luck.

That doesn’t strike me as fair. The names they choose for their games are a little on the unimaginative side, perhaps, but they’re by no means bad. Bionic Dues I particularly like, and The Last Federation even manages to be slightly witty.

Anyway, that aside, I’ll echo what nearly everyone else already said. This is a shame and I wish them better luck in the future. I’ve usually enjoyed their games and I probably would’ve bought this one if it had been available long enough for me to do so. A world without Arcen is a sad thought, to be honest.

I feel the same. Arcen’s games don’t particularly appeal to me, but they’re still creating novel art; and the gaming scene is a richer place for them being there. When word broke about Raptor being removed from Steam, I scooped it up expecting it to be refunded. Since it hasn’t been, I’m happily letting Arcen keep the five dollars. The game may be nothing I’ll ever play but I want them to continue to exist, and with two titles in a row selling poorly that seems like something which is at risk.

I really like Arcen as a company and I loved AI War, but they still need to take a long hard look at themselves. Chris Park is a talented game designer, but he has no Aesthetic sensibility whatsoever. It’s an issue that continues to drag down all of Arcen’s games.

They are desperately in need of someone who can take the reigns on that, to the point where I’d suggest Chris Park has little to no input on how his games look at all.

Agreed on Vw/oW – I rarely have a strong negative reaction to a game’s aesthetics, but something about that one just… ugh. Still, they do make some genuinely interesting stuff, so I hope this current hoo-hah doesn’t do too much damage.

In my humble opinion, this developer sounds like he’s living in a country where it is relatively easy to be a game developer (USA?). Unfortunately for him, his first game was a market exception, and not a rule, therefore he hasn’t developed proper business sense, because from his perspective he did everything he usually does, but somehow things magically happened when he did AI Wars.

I sort of pity him for turning this important marketing lesson into a feeling of “What I did wrong? Why u no like me anymore” as if his players were his parents.

Raptor is a bullshit game, made on a whim by an author who’s so pampered he does everything on a whim (and feels entitled to) — most people find it utterly irrelevant for their lives (on the first glance, at least), hence the non-existent purchases, including kids who are much more likely to bash each other with their mother’s dildo, or ADHD-rob a virtual bank while screaming incessantly.

WOW, I wish I knew what the British equivalent of “armchair quarterback” is (look it up on Urban Dictionary if you’re not familiar with the term), because that’s exactly what you are.

Chris Park of Arcen has done plenty of introspection and self-evaluation after the failure of his last handful of games. His full explanation of why they were pulling the game (which you probably didn’t bother to read) linked above at the Arcen Steam forums and also here link to arcengames.com explains as such.

By no means does Chris have a sense of being “pampered.” I have no idea where you got that idea from. He released this game into Early Access to get a sense of how it would be received before putting more resources into it. Turns out, based on the reception, it would have cost them more than it would have made to keep developing it, so he had to do this to prevent his company, which is already struggling, from going under. This is by no means “doing things on a whim.”

If you want one, then absolutely: yes! I don’t want to take your money if you don’t want to give it to us. If you like the game and want us to keep the $4.50 or so you spent on it, then we’re obviously grateful. But please in no way feel guilted into it or anything like that.

If you get the F2P version of the game and want to throw some change our way, we do have a tip jar, but we’d be just as happy to see you try out one of our other titles.